Thing I Find Weird About China, Part 2: Eating Ability

I remember eating anything as a kid. Literally, anything. I understand from my parents that at a young age I wasn’t a particularly picky eater. Sure, I’d fuss about a few things while I sat in my highchair but overall I wasn’t concerned about whatever food was going into my mouth as long as there was food going into my mouth. My mother has a picture of me, age two, at a family bbq: a fat, round blondie with ringlets in a bathing suit giving the camera cuteye for taking time away from me eating my hotdog, which I was holding up and maliciously squishing to death in my left hand while my right hand was settled “no-nonsense” style on my hip. This picture can be said to have defined my eating habits for the rest of my life.

As I continued through the ages and expanded my palate, my sister stayed stagnant in her eating habits. She refused to consume anything other than dry cereal and McDonalds for a good portion of her life. And by “eat McDonalds” I mean order a “cheeseburger happymeal with nothing on it but extra extra extra pickles”. For a solid eight years, from grades 1 until the end of elementary school, Tyler would only eat a cheese whiz sandwich for lunch, which consisted of cheese whiz slathered between two pieces of Wonderbread or Texas Toast White (“On BOTH sides, Mom, not just one!”). It got to a point where my dad began to bet us we wouldn’t eat certain things in exchange for money. My sister downright refused to eat things, except for the rarest occasions, while I happily agreed to stuff whatever morsel down my throat for a few extra dollars in my allowance that week. Specific instances I still remember, such as spitting a snail into the aisle at The Keg or eating King Crab for vacation spending money. All of these instances resulted in me eating the food, my sister complaining about the cash, and both of us getting money (to my constant disappointment). Eventually my dad had to stop this process, because despite its hilarity, I would have made him broke.

There is a saying in China that roughly translates into “If it runs, swims, flys or crawls, we eat it.” This is 100% true. I have explained in previous posts my surprised at walking into the grocery story and finding everything you could imagine hanging or swimming, dead or alive, in the aisles. I have posted videos of live scorpions on sticks and tarantulas, lizards and starfish waiting to be consumed as street food. The supermarket I go to, which is a French brand named Carrefour, has one half aisle for Western-style products. The rest is for Asian food, meaning everything you can think of. I thought I was finally accustomed to this until a week or two ago when I stumbled upon a new thing settled between the giant gutted and dried hanging pigs and the live eels and turtles swimming the fish tanks: grub.

I don’t remember exactly what they are called. I don’t remember exactly what they are the babies of. I don’t even know what their purpose for existence is. All I really know is that they DISGUST me beyond all reason and understanding. That day I was shopping for some lunch and walking toward a salad bar that they have set up. I passed a big barrel with these weird-looking brown pods on it, about two to three inches long and perfectly cylindrical. I am constantly amazed by what the Chinese can eat, so peered in to take a better look. As I did, my foot slipped on the just-washed floor and I accidently kicked the barrel. ALL of the brown cylinders began SQUIRMING! I backed away, horrified at what I was discovering, but that’s not the end of it. Oh, no. A woman walked by with her shopping cart and settled close to the barrel so she could take a look at some fish. Her infant son, sitting in the seat of the cart, reached over and grabbed one of the bugs to unceremoniously bite into half of the wriggling, disgusting freak of an insect. It squished and crunched. I ran, grabbed the nearest bag I could see, and quietly threw up in it.

My advice for you: If you ever visit China, be prepared to eat things and NOT ask questions.

Thing I Find Weird About China, Part 1: Bathroom Etiquette

There are two things I want to address in this post: the bathroom setup itself and pottytraining youngsters in the suburbs.

Right now, as you read this, you are probably sitting on your couch or in a chair at home relaxing. You probably had a long day at work or school and are using some time to unwind. Maybe you are even indulging in a nice glass of wine or a cold beer, because let’s face it, you deserve it after the weeks you’ve been putting in. I know, life is rough. After a few, you will have to excuse yourself to the little ladies or gents room, as expected. You use the upright standing toilet without fear or remorse, as after your many years of life on this planet you are accustomed to such and see no problems with your bathroom routine. You flush, reach over to turn on the sink, wash your hands (thoroughly, I hope) and dry them on the soft, sweetly-scented towels you keep hanging on the towel rack. You then proceed back to your couch to continue your unabashed indulgence of the good life. This pattern is similar at all restaurants where you live, except it includes good food, great company and more alcohol.

I, however, do not enjoy in the luxury of your bathroom routine. I no longer think of utilizing bathroom facilities as a painless and familiar experience. China has forever changed my understanding of “public hygiene”, “toilets”, and the term “simple” being used to describe a natural process that occurs several times a day. Here’s why.

I am more than certain many of you have not seen an Eastern-style toilet stall. These are shaped just like a Western toilet stall in a public bathroom: rectangular door, semi-functional lock, signs asking you to flush. However, the toilet itself is a very unwelcome surprise when you swing the door open, as it is literally a porcelain hole in the floor. You are expected to squat over the hole, with your two feet to the side of it, and try to balance. Holding onto the wall, although an option, is not always smart considering the lack of cleaning most of these public facilities go through. Toilet paper does not exist; I have been laughed at a couple of times when I have been desperate enough to use these places and asked someone for help. Chinese people consider our style of bathroom etiquette to be unsanitary as in their scenario you do not need to have your hands anywhere near the actual process. Sometimes you are lucky to have a door on the stall. Now don’t get me wrong: in many upscale hotels and dining facilities, Western-style toilets do exist and are kept pristine for their Foreigner guests. But really, who comes to China to hibernate in these places? Women: living/travelling in China means you have excellent leg muscles. Men: living/travelling in China means that you, too, have excellent leg muscles.

You can imagine my despair at discovering this washroom for the first time, which occurred at a transfer subway station platform when I thought I might pee my pants if I didn’t shove everyone into the oncoming metro train and dash for the nearest closed door. I was mortified as it was the worst bathroom I had ever seen, reeked something foul AND I HAD to use it or suffer the consequences. I can honestly say I have used an Eastern toilet less than the fingers on both my hands over these past three months out of fear.

Continuing with bathroom talk, the rural Chinese have an incredibly… interesting way of potty training their young children. As discussed previously, I live in a suburb of Beijing called Tongzhou, the Mississauga or Markham of Beijing, if you will. Although being on the major subway line, I am still considered to be out of Beijing by the snooty high class of Beijing society. I don’t really notice the rural life in my day-to-day activities, except for incidents like this.

From the age of three or four months until they are about three years old, Chinese children wear pants with a hole in the bottom. The hole exposes their entire baby butt, so its almost like their parents took a pair of scissors and cut out the entire seat part of the pants. Children do not wear diapers, so walking around Tongzhou means you will see at least one baby bum running around in front of your eyes. Every hour or so, the mother of the child whistles a specific tone that they have trained their child to become accustomed to. When the child hears this tone, they squat in the middle of the street and pee. No joke. If they are too young to stand on their own, the mother leans the child on her chest and holds their legs out in the air, as if they are squatting without the ground underneath them, and they pee that way. I have never seen a child do a #2 (Thank GOD) so I will not comment on this.

How weird is that?!?! This is by far the most shocking thing I have experienced in China so far. I wanted to take a picture of it to post on this blog, but I couldn’t decide what was stranger: a child mid-squat peeing on the street or an odd, foreign white girl taking a picture of a child mid-squat peeing on the street. In retrospect, I think I would be the stranger of the two.

You’ll have to excuse the slowdown of posts over the last month. November is a big month during the school year. This month my agenda, so far, has included writing and marking midterms for 140 students, preparing notes these students for parent-teacher interviews this Friday, two weekly meetings, and getting over a slight stomach virus keeping me tired all the time. I have also been to a number of nice restaurants (but still managed to loose weight!), switched my pills back and forth, gone shopping, seen some new sights and had a night or two of heavy drinking, all of which will be commented on soon. Also, my personal computer has broken: the screen has almost fallen off, the keys are difficult to push and I have to click something two or three times for it to process. I am using my school computer, so access to blogger and facebook is limited.

I miss you all! I’m back at the end of January for a month, don’t forget it!

DYING BUSY

I'll post this weekend, promise!

Things I've Done Since Returning to Reality

I received a wonderful and suprising gift from my students this past week. I had been mentioning offhand how I really wanted to decorate the back board for Halloween but I couldn't draw, so maybe I would bring in pictures and tape them up so the kids could see what it was like in the West. A couple of days later I arrived to find the back blackboard decorated with Halloween pictures and an obviously researched blurb on what Halloween is! They even made a mobile of scary pictures and hung it from the projector on the ceiling! I couldn't believe how sweet and thoughtful it was! This is a picture of my PAL kids, my youngest students and members of the grade that decorated for me. So sweet! Im actually really sad about exams coming up, because administration will be using the grades to mix around the classes and make proper levels of students rather than a complete mishmash that it is in each class. I'm supposed to teach the top students and the worst students, both of which should be more than interesting, but I'm sad to be loosing this wonderful group!

One of the teachers from the school, Peter, is in the chorus of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, so early evening one Saturday we headed down to watch him preform. The venue was in the Forbidden City, actually IN the most famous tourist section of Beijing that is normally blocked off at night. It was absolutely wonderful. They played a mix of Chinese and English songs all having to do with Rivers; the chorus sang for maybe half of them. It was my first time to something like this and I was pretty much in awe at how beautiful everything sounds when you are there in person. I snapped this photo and then got yelled at so its my only one.

Shankar and Ileen, two teachers, had their son's third birthday party at an awesome restaurant a couple of Saturday afternoons ago. We had SEVEN courses, all of which filled the table like in this picture (this was round three). Literally, I ate one, maybe two, of everything that I liked and I was stuffed by the end of it. A weird thing about it: I stayed completely sober because, ya know, it's a kid's birthday party. However, the party was separated into mens' section and womens' section and the men just got absolutely, horribly wasted. Nobody considered this out of the ordinary even though the party was for a child. I ended up sitting on the mens' side because the womens' side ran out of space and I was better friends with the men anyways, so I got quite a show. It just didn't feel right to get hammered with little kids running around with toys and stuff, but I guess that's the way China works!

A Short Delay But Back In Action!

After a short delay I am finally back on my blog! Things got a little hectic here with two major firsts happening in China: my first visitor and my first sickness!

China experienced its Golden Holiday week from October 1st-7th, meaning I was on vacation during this time. Michael, a good friend from the UK who I met in university, decided to do a round-the-world trip in 45 days that he has between quitting his first job and beginning another. This meant that I was the first on his list of visitors between China, Australia and the States. He arrived in Shanghai on the 27th of September (I think) and I met him there in the late evening on Thursday the 30th of September. Nothing memorable to report about the flight there other than the amazing service in both the Beijing and Shanghai airports. I arrived very early to the airport thinking a biblical exodus of Chinese out of Beijing to vacation spots was about to happen. It was extremely busy but so organized that I was checked in, through security and at my gate within an hour. The flight was about an hour and forty minutes, and was in the terminal right on time. Once again, the Chinese amazed me when I received my checked luggage, got a taxi (when there were literally 200 people in line infront of me) and was at my hotel in an hour! I arrived at the airport at 12am, and was drinking in my hotel room with Michael by 1am! We stayed at the Crown Plaza Hotel, which was very beautiful and very close to subway stations and bar sections, the latter being the most important of course :)

That night we went out for a crazy night with Henricka, Michael's friend living in Shanghai. This was the beginning of a six day long, daily cycle: go out to a club, go home at 5am, wake up at 1pm, find lunch, visit popular tourist spots in Shanghai, go back to the hotel and get ready, repeat. It was six days of hilarity and inside jokes, amazing city scapes and spectacular sights, long nights and sunny days, mouthwatering food and tantalizing desserts. We spared nothing in our quest to conquer this city. I was in love with it more each day: it is beautiful and modern, and you would never run out of things to do. If I decide to stay in China, I think I may move to Shanghai. The opulence of the city still astounds me. ANYTHING you wanted was available. For example, one night Michael decided it was important that we saw sharks while we were there (don't ask me why). We ended up at a club at 2am with a shark tank in it stretching the entire hallway! There are just too many sights and sounds and overall memories to be discussed in one post, so please check out my albums on facebook and take what you can from them.

While there we also went to the Shanghai World Expo, a show where countries send delegations to set up pavillions to promote their countries. It began in March and continues until the end of October. IT. WAS. AMAZING. INCREDIBLE. Just as the Chinese do in everything else, they completely outdid themselves. The amount of space and time put into the show was insane. Just insane. We were able to visit the UK Pavillion (interesting but meh), the Canadian Pavillon (AMAZING, I was so proud), the Peruvian Pavillion (kind of nice) and the South American Pavillion (lots of freebies). We ate Chinese food there and were really upset about it when we realized all pavillions sold food and we could have had poutine and empanadas. Oh well. Each of the countries tried to outdo each other with the buildings, so the architecture was fabulous. We went for one day, but should have gone for two.

Michael then came back to Bejing for four days, where we continued the Daily Cycle. While he was here we went to the Beijing Open 2010 where we watched Andy Murray and Robin Soderling kick ass in some entertaining tennis. We went to the Silk Market where we bought a bunch of fakes to bring back with Michael. Other than that we didn't do too much, as I had to work on the Friday and Saturday, so Michael puttered around by himself.

On the Saturday I woke up completely congested and weak. I went to work but by the end of the day I knew it was over: Michael and Shanghai had defeated me, and I was sick. Really sick. By Sunday I had a fever thrown into the mix, and by Monday I was staying home from work to head to the doctor. I knew I had a sinus infection, so I told the doctor, and I swear he didn't even bother checking me after that. Thank God I was right, because the medicine worked. By Thursday I was feeling much better, but by Friday I started getting pains in my stomach. Bad pains. PARASITE PAINS. This was bad; my constant fear of being away from Canada is getting another parasite, and it looked like it had happened. I told the other teachers what I was feeling and one of them recommended I go to the pharmacy and pick up an antibiotic they had used for the same thing. I grabbed it, have finished it, and I feel fantastic! Crisis averted!

I will be updating regularly again now that I am back. We are starting into the midterm season so work is very busy. The kids are warming up to me more and more each day, and I still love my 15-16 year old classes and want my eldest 18 year old class students to go far, far away from me forever. Each day is constantly different and I never know what to expect.

I still love China!

Things That Make Me Angry About My Job

1. There has been a huge debate for the past couple of weeks as to whether or not we would be receiving proper health insurance. Over the past couple of years the health insurance has covered virtually nothing that the teachers needed. By nothing I mean one of the teachers was hit by a taxi and needed emergency medical care that was not covered, and another teacher now continues to have severe problems walking due to severe leg thrombosis (or whatever) that they wouldn't operate on because it wasn't covered. Not acceptable. We received confirmation at a meeting today of what we will be getting. We will be receiving coverage in specified Beijing PUBLIC hospitals ONLY when we are at school. Let me repeat: PUBLIC hospitals, ONLY at school. How does this make any logical sense? Basically if I'm sick I need to be at school, and then leave school. What if I get sick on the weekend? None of my prescriptions are covered, and if I need medical attention like I did in Peru I'm going to have to quit my job and move back home because the insurance is so bad. But the thing that irks me the most is that both in the interview and on my contract it was said that I was to receive 100% medical coverage for everything. Now the same man is reversing his decision.

2. Disorganization. It is to the extreme here. With the massive amount of Chinese population, they need to find jobs for everyone. This means that a job that would normally take only one to complete is filled by five people, so five people are basically doing the same thing all day. This leads, not to increased productivity, but barely veiled chaos and a lack of responsibility for any sole individual. If something goes wrong, nobody claims it was them! Ever! If one of them does, they are fired instantly, since there are so many people floating around that could do the same job.

The point of this? Nothing is ever done completely or fully and there is nobody to turn to when you realize that is the case. Take our visa change, for example. I recently booked my flights to Shanghai (WOO HOO!) with the understanding that I need my passport to fly (as opposed to the train, where you need nothing but your ticket). When we had dropped our passports off at the visa office to be granted our resident visas, we received slips giving us the date that they needed to be picked up: today. Mr. Liu, the man from the school who was in control of this process, told us he would pick them up for us. Okay. We then had to go to the police and register ourselves, as our business visa was expiring soon and we didn't want them to come looking for us. The police gave us a slip saying we needed to reregister once we received our new visas within 24 hours by September 27th: yesterday. Okay.

Monday the 27th. Knowing of the lack of organzation within the structure of the school, I called Jessie, the foreigners' assistant, to make sure Mr. Liu was doing hs job. She told me to call him. I called him and he said, "oh yeah, don't worry, I'm getting them on Thursday," to which I promptly replied, "uhh NO you're NOT, you are getting them on Tuesday." He told me to bring him all of the foreigners return slips, which Jessie had, so I had to call her to bring them to him. She then forgot. I reminded her again an hour later. This morning I called Mr. Liu every hour on the hour to make sure he was going to the immigration office downtown to pick up our passports, which he finally did. He returned them to us at ONE THIRTY PM, when we need to register with the police station before FIVE PM. I had to frantically run around the school trying to find someone to help me or cover my classes as I had to work until 4:20 pm, but of course nobody was available as the entire world literally shuts down for lunch from 11:30-2. I was FURIOUS. Finally we had to solve it ourselves: Emilie and Shannon were able to bring mine to the police station with special permission from their offices. I swear on my LIFE, if I had not called all morning, and ran around like this, I never would have received my passport and would have been thrown in jail for not registering (seriously, thats what they do) and not have been able to fly to Shanghai. AHHH!

Adventures on Vacation: Tea House, Getting Lost, Helpful Strangers

Wednesday, September 22nd: Yvonne, Emilie and I had decided earlier in the week that if we all chose to stay home for the holiday we would spend a day biking and visiting a traditional tea house. I chose a tea house out of the guidebook I had borrowed from Yvonne and we met up Wednesday morning. It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside - the sun was shining but it wasn't too hot, perfect for our adventure!

The bike ride into Beijing was fairly easy. It took us two hours, including a pit stop, to get to the tea house, which was close to Tian'amen Square (the center of Beijing). The entire city is bike-able. There are huge bike lanes on every major road, sometimes even larger than the space for the cars to drive on , and there are always people biking here and there on petal bikes or mopeds. The ride felt fantastic and it was definitely the best way to see the city. We were able to point out places that we recognized and took pictures of the places we didn't so that we could remember them later. Both the residential and non-residential areas of Beijing are equally green - there are trees lining every street and usually manmade streams or parks every couple of blocks. Absolutely stunning.

We arrived at the tea house at noon, just in time for lunch. On the outside it didn't look like anything other than an older looking Chinese building, pretty typical. This meant that as soon as we walked in the door we were blown away by the decor! It was a three-story old Chinese restaurant-style building decorated like something out of the old kung-fu movies or something you would imagine in a dream. Every floor that you sat on overlooked the main room which had a stage in the center. It was stunning. We took a seat by the window, away from the numerous groups of white people who had come off of tour buses and were sitting scarfing down the staple Chinese dishes. We were greeted by a traditionally dressed male server who spoke English and we ordered WAY too much food - chicken covered in almonds with a green tea dipping sauce, cabbage rolls stuffed with wasabi, vegetable sushi-looking rolls, moon cakes, fried rice and two types of dumplings, both made with tea in the dough part. Absolutely fantastic meal. We also ordered two types of tea: a traditional green and one we didn't recognize. The waiter served them to us with all pomp and style; the tea was put into two different types of glasses with hot water, and we were to continually fill them up with more water after we served ourselves every time. One of the teas began as a little ball but eventually opened up into a beautiful pink flower in the glass! Both were delicious. In the middle of our meal the staff put on a shadow puppet show on stage, with a fox and birds and words I didn't understand but was still delighted to hear. Amazing.

The best part of the tea house was actually at the end. After all of the other tour bus Westerners left, the place quickly filled up with old, hunched over, wrinkly grandpas and grandmas and they were all served tea in these traditional pots. A band with VERY traditional Chinese instruments came out, and people began to take turns singing Chinese opera on stage. You could tell that the first show was defintely for the Westerners; I felt absolutely priveledged to be sharing something that was the real China: a Wednesday afternoon tea break with friends over some good music. The people were smiling at us and laughing with us and saying hello, clearly happy that we were so appreciative of their culture and what they enjoyed. I felt connected to the people in the room without ever having to say a word. Needless to say, we left the tea house absolutely giddy at our experiences; it is definitely in my top ten list of the best things I have ever done.

We decided to run some errands before heading home. I went to the train station to try and get train tickets to and from Shanghai for when a friend of mine, Michael, visits from England next week. There is supposed to be a window for foreigners, which of course wasn't open, so I waited in line only to be rudely refused by the woman because I couldn't speak Chinese. It was the first time I have ever felt helpless in China. I went outside, genuinely upset, and told Emilie and Yvonne, who then proceeded to ask a group of four young Chinese girls if they spoke English. They did and when we asked them if they would write down what I needed in Chinese for me, they offered to come and wait in line with me to buy my tickets! We waited in line together for an HOUR only to find out that I can't buy the tickets more than 10 days ahead of time, and they weren't upset at all by it. The only words I received from them were "don't worry", "good luck", "my pleasure to help you", and, of course, "you have beautiful eyes"(That is now the staple thing that I hear from Chinese people if they can speak any English at all). It was so kind!

Next we headed to a bookstore where we bought some Chinese phrasebooks, and tried to get Emilie's camera fixed. The guy was a total ripoff, and we ended up waiting around for an hour and a half just to receive the camera back still broken and to not pay anything. By then it was dark: our worst fear. How were we to ride our bikes back for two hours in the dark? Badly, as after an hour and a half of petaling we were so lost that we were on our way to Shanghai. Living in the suburbs, NONE of our maps show the location of anything that we recognize, so we popped out our new phrasebooks and stopped a woman and her teenage son in the street. The young boy spoke a little bit of English, and we were able to communicate that we are very lost and need to find the nearest subway station to find our bearings. It turned out that we had petalled over an hour in the wrong direction! By this time it was 8 o'clock, meaning we would have had to petal for another three hours to make it home. Things were not looking good but we were told to wait here by the young boy. We sat down and tried to think of what to do. We couldn't figure out what the boy was doing, running up and down the street and stopping at certain places. He arrived back to his mother and began to "talk" to her (sounded like bickering to me) for awhile and then running again. After maybe fifteen minutes he came back and told us no buses would take us to the subway; he had been stopping all the buses to ask where they go! His mother and him got at it again, and then the mother got on the cell phone and started calling a number of people. By this point we had a crowd of about 5 people around us wondering what was going on with these three white women and their bicycles out in the middle of the street. We were obviously somewhere where white people are very scarce by the looks we were receiving. Suprisingly, we weren't weirded out by it and it was actually incredibly funny: they all were trying to communicate to us in Chinese Charades, taking pictures with us, giggling with us at our lack of communication with each other, asking for kisses. Eventually we realized what had happened after another thirty minutes of waiting and another 7 people joining our group: the mother had called a distant relative to come in a van, pick us and our bikes up, and drive us home! We couldn't beleve it! They stayed with us for an hour and made sure we returned home safely. I don't think I have ever experienced kindless like that anywhere else in the world. We took pictures with them, exchanged emails, and promised to email them the pictures with us. You could tell that for everyone there, it was an enjoyable suprise to find us in their part of town and would defnitely be a funny conversation over the dinner table. We arrived back home after half an hour of gigglng in a van, Yvonne on Emilie's lap in the front and me basically lying down on the bikes in the back, completely safe and in great spirits! What an adventure!

I don't even want to write about Thursday and Friday, because compared to Wednesday nothing remotely that fantastic has happened. I've napped a lot, cleaned my apartment, had some great street food, went out for a drunk night with friends, ordered take-out food at 2am to be delivered to ANOTHER restaurant while we at dine-in food there, hit the gym, and done a LOT of marking for school. It's been a delightful three days but I am dreading working the next six. They are going to be long as I am going to have my mind on Shanghai all week. SIX DAYS UNTIL I'M THERE!